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I recently accepted a position from Teach and Learn with Georgia, a Georgian Ministry of Education program designed to bring native speakers of English into classrooms around the country. I will be moving to Georgia in August of 2014 to begin my assignment.

Before this latest adventure, I studied at Bogazici University in Istanbul Turkey and at Azerbaijan University of Languages. I speak English German Spanish, Turkish Azerbaijani and Uzbek and am currently trying my hand at Georgian.

Monday, February 18, 2013

The Residency Permit Fiasco

And now to the Hannah serial adventure of the residency permit. I was able
to get my student certificate (öğrenci
belgesi) by Thursday and went early Friday morning to the central police
station down in Fatih, because I was required to take care of it there since
they have the foreigners division. This takes about an hour and half of travel
each way. You know you have arrived at your destination by the police officers
with gigantic guns in front of the place, similar to the soldiers with gigantic
guns guarding Sultanahmet. Anyway, you act very friendly as you walk past them,
go through a metal detector that may or may not be on, give someone your
passport so that they can randomly type things into a computer. They say that
it is to keep track of who is in the building at all times, but no one checks
you off when you leave. I think that it is to provide more civil service jobs.
Anyway, now you’re into the complex. You march up a couple of stairs and a
courtyard through a haze of smoke, and in my case on Friday, rain, into a building
that could use a couple more heaters and walk into the Secretary of State’s
Office from hell. First of all imagine that no one at the Secretary of State’s
Office speaks English. This is the Secretary of State’s Office for foreigners,
for whom the best common language is probably English, but no matter, it’s Turkish
or nothing. Awesome. Next imagine that all the signage is also in Turkish.
Good. Imagine that the lobby is full of various offices for people who have
forgotten parts of the application because no one can figure out what is
actually needed for the application. Imagine now that you walk up the stairs.
There is an information desk with 2 Turkish speakers at it. They look at the
number on your paper that you show in their general direction praying for mercy
and some kind of aid. They tell you to go to a desk. You walk past rows of desk
with plastic in front, most of which are either not staffed or have staff not
doing anything at them. The aisle you walk though is too narrow for the average
American to begin with and about 25 people are standing in it waiting for their
number to be called, even though the number system is a mysterious creature and
subject to flights of fancy that include going backwards and sideways. It doesn’t
help that the numbers go up to about 800 and how they are assigned is also
mysterious and most probably simply an Act of God. You don’t have an
appointment that day because the school told you that didn’t need one. You go
up to the appointed desk the next time the guy is free. He avoids eye contact
or the acknowledgement of your existence for a few minutes by ordering tea and
chatting with his compatriots, who are similarly ignoring their charges. Finally
he looks up and you smile, because charm and bribery are your only hopes. He
begins to look at your paperwork, which is complete darn it, even though no one
else’s is. He frowns when he gets to the date on your paper and tells you to go
to a different office. This is down more rows and rows of desks. You must finagle
your way in and find the one person working that day. He looks at your paper,
has you write your name on a piece of computer paper for reasons as misguided
as the ones for looking at your passport at the entrance and tells you to come
back at 7:30 PM for an appointment. It is now 9:30 AM. If you are me you decide
that walking more than an hour to Sultahahmet in the pouring rain is a great
plan. You end up at the archeology museum for the afternoon, cold and trying to
dry out, which you do successfully except for your feet, which will think will
be cold and damp for the rest of your life. The museum is fantastic though and you
randomly meet up with a friend and have dinner with them. You take the tram to
Fatih again and show up about an hour early, because what the hey, maybe they
will be free. When you get there you go through the same routine except that
the place is almost deserted and pretty much all the counters are free. The guy
asks you to sign various forms in Turkish without explaining what they say which
momentarily convinces you that you sold your soul to the Turkish Police. You
decide that if it means you get a residency permit it is worth it. It turns out
you agree to get kicked out of the country etc if you lied on your forms. He
underlines many things in red pen and asks you a question which you worry is something
terribly important but it turns out he wants you to confirm your parent’s names
and your place of birth. You’re not entirely sure you can remember. He finally
starts stapling things all over the place and hands it back to you. He says
that you can come back on Monday to pay for the thing since in the incredible wisdom
of this bureaucratic adventure appointments are available after the cashier
closes but they can only begin processing your forms once you have paid for the
thing. He tells you that you will owe 198 TL for the pleasure of another hour and
a half commute. You decide that bitching him out for the absolute lunacy and
frustrating quality of this adventure will not aid the process and so smile and
leave. You heave a deep sigh of relief that the Turkish police have not decided
to jail you, kick you out of the country or use their gigantic guns on you. And
you leave.

Then you get up nice and early on Monday morning and go into Fatih. You go
through security again. You give them your passport. You go to the cashier’s
desk and give them exactly 198 TL. He signs a form in great swirly letters,
gives one to you and does some more artistic stapling with the other and you
return to the desk and wait for someone to be free, give another great big
smile and hold up the line behind you. The man tears off a chunk of the form
where he has written the date when you can pick up your permit. It is the day
that you want to leave the country. You ask in the nicest voice you can muster
after having roused yourself at 7:30 in the morning for an hour and a half on
public transport that consisted of sitting next to a man that you are fairly
certain has TB and then giving up your seat on the tram to an old lady and almost
falling over 60,000 times as it careens around corners in a frankly non-safe
feeling manner. You ask the man at the desk if your appointment could maybe
possibly be earlier. He raises an eyebrow and asks when you want it to be and
you very sweetly say just a day earlier. He alters the date and says that’s
fine and you thank him profusely. Leaving the building you sing Mr. Rodgers “It’s
a beautiful day in the neighborhood” to the guards and their gigantic guns. And
you go home. And you begin to prepare for your hopefully final trip into Fatih
to pick up your residency permit and shake the dust of the Emniyet from your
heels forever. Please please please let it be so. I’ll let you know soon
enough. Hopefully you found this story funny and enjoyable. Because I have to
tell you, if you can’t laugh at the ridiculous bureaucratic tangles in this
country, you might just lose your mind.

I graduated from Michigan State University in 2014 with degrees in chemistry, anthropology and Turkic languages. When not out globetrotting, I can be found perched in front of my laptop, sharing my adventures with you.